[POSTECH hosts the 19th POSTECH-KAIST Science War on September 23-24]

POSTECH and KAIST – Korea’s two leading science and engineering universities – will compete for the championship title of the POSTECH-KAIST Science War, hosted this year on the POSTECH campus on September 23-24, 2022. The event, which had been held virtually for the last two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic, will finally be held in-person this year, raising anticipation and excitement from students.

In its 19th year, the POSTECH-KAIST Science War (POKA War) is an annual competitive event held every year between POSTECH and KAIST to promote an active exchange of students. The two schools have taken turns hosting the event every year since 2002, but as in-person events became impossible for the past two years, all matches were replaced by the Cyber Science and Engineering Student Exchange, which was held online.

This year, the competition is expected to be even fiercer. The best science and engineering brains of Korea will compete in hacking competitions, science quizzes, artificial intelligence (AI) programming, and League of Legends, and in sporting events including baseball, basketball, and soccer.

In the hacking competition, points are earned depending on the level of difficulty and time taken to solve each problem. The team with the highest total score over a period of 12 hours wins. In the AI programming competition, the winner is determined according to the AI program designed by each university based on the Quoridor game (a game where the team whose pawn advances to the opposite camp first wins). In the case of the E-sports competition, the matches will be held at POSTECH’s E-sports Colosseum, where students can play and watch the games, and enjoy light food.

The school that wins 4 or more events out of the total 7 will win the championship and so far, KAIST has been slightly ahead with 9 wins and 8 losses over the years.

This year, the events will be even better thanks to the support from Autocrypt (CEO: Eui-seok Kim), an autonomous driving security company founded by a POSTECH alumnus, and POSTECH Holdings (CEO: Ju-Hyun Yoo), who each donated 20 million won (USD 14,000) and 5 million won (USD 3,500), respectively.

Kyung-Min Lee (Department of Computer Engineering), the Chairman of the POKA War Organizing Committee, explained, “We are doing our best to prepare for the events so that the students, who have missed out on campus life due to COVID-19 pandemic, can fully enjoy this in-person event after a long hiatus.” He added, “I look forward to resuming the culture of exchange that was put on hold through this event.”

Through this event, POSTECH and KAIST promote a friendly exchange between students of the two leading universities in science and engineering in Korea, while providing students with the opportunity to network with each other. The POKA War is held annually in mid-September, and the name of the competition changes according to the host university. This year’s competition, which is being held at POSTECH, is officially called the KAPO War, according to the rule that puts the name of the host university at the end.